Now allow me to summarise. Manga Style is a shader for Daz Studio 4 that takes the lighting and texture information of a model, and generates a dynamic screentone pattern, similar to what is used in many black and white comic books (such as Japanese manga). The screentone effect is completely flat (like true screentone), and can be customised widely. Not only do you have the ability to scale the screentone effect via the tiling values, but the screentone effect itself is based on a black and white image file. You can use any pattern you like, allowing you to mimic various different comic shading styles; round dot, diamond, perfect lines, sketchy lines, cross hatching, scribbles, and more. On top of all that, you also have ink outlines that can change width depending on the lighting.

Attached is an example render of BelBel and Koroko using the current iteration of the Manga Style Shader. From now on, i'll be posting my progress here on the Daz Studio forums so that I can get your feedback. :)

EDIT: Ok, apparently large image attachments don't resize to fit the forum's width like they do on other websites, and using html to display an image doesn't work on the new forums (you used to be able to do this on the older forums), so have a severely resized image instead. For the original size, go here: http://i.imgur.com/nVRRU.jpg

Comments

Would you consider making a little button for your Visual Style Shaders, similar to what they have for "Daz Studio Render" or "Reality Render" I want to use your shaders in the promo renders for a few of my upcoming products, and I'd like a convenient way of stamping that information on there rather than adding an asterisk at the bottom that reads "promotional renders done with bishounentaurus' visual style shaders in daz studio 4".

Would you consider making a little button for your Visual Style Shaders, similar to what they have for "Daz Studio Render" or "Reality Render" I want to use your shaders in the promo renders for a few of my upcoming products, and I'd like a convenient way of stamping that information on there rather than adding an asterisk at the bottom that reads "promotional renders done with bishounentaurus' visual style shaders in daz studio 4".

Oh my, i've never considered that. I'll have to have a think about it. :)

Dang! You read my mind. This was going to be my first project with the new SDK. But that's okay. I'm more than happy to let you do all the coding, especially since your results look a lot better than what mine would have ;-).

Fantastic! The images on the blog look just as promising as the anime shaders did.

Two question though...first, when the character is moved, does the zip-pattern track WITH the character, or does the dot pattern stay in a fixed constant position while the shape of the figure "ripples underneath? I can't really tell from the blog, but the former would seem preferable under most situations.

Second, this would be even more useful if there was a utility to output matching screentones as blank zip-tone sheets so that there wouldn't be a fight trying to get the dot patterns zip on the background as the foreground (the standard manga process is to lay down full zip sheets, then take out sections by applying opaque white over them. Programs like Manga-Studio do this, but I can see that matching the second party's built in half-tone patterns to these for a consistent look would be a major bear..). It would be much quicker to load in a pattern generated at a scale/pattern that already matches the figure, but actually shading and rendering a flat background every time seems like something that could be automated and run off separately... couldn't it?

Second, this would be even more useful if there was a utility to output matching screentones as blank zip-tone sheets so that there wouldn't be a fight trying to get the dot patterns zip on the background as the foreground (the standard manga process is to lay down full zip sheets, then take out sections by applying opaque white over them. Programs like Manga-Studio do this, but I can see that matching the second party's built in half-tone patterns to these for a consistent look would be a major bear..). It would be much quicker to load in a pattern generated at a scale/pattern that already matches the figure, but actually shading and rendering a flat background every time seems like something that could be automated and run off separately... couldn't it?

I'll be perfectly honest with you...I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. :gulp:

first, when the character is moved, does the zip-pattern track WITH the character, or does the dot pattern stay in a fixed constant position while the shape of the figure "ripples underneath? I can't really tell from the blog, but the former would seem preferable under most situations.

I took the liberty of rendering out a video of a moving sphere using the dot style (tiling set to 50 so you could clearly see the dots).

As you can see, the actual screentone effect stays still, with the dots dynamically changing size to suit the lighting information. This makes the most sense to me. I also rendered out the exact same animation with the tiling set to 200, producing the much more noisy type of screentone manga is known for.

What you get is a screentone that although static, undulates slightly due to the way Daz Studio renders small patterns. When you compare this to "A Detective Story" from the Animatrix (which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4c0Aw6cl4c ), the effect is actually pretty accurate.

Second, this would be even more useful if there was a utility to output matching screentones as blank zip-tone sheets so that there wouldn't be a fight trying to get the dot patterns zip on the background as the foreground (the standard manga process is to lay down full zip sheets, then take out sections by applying opaque white over them. Programs like Manga-Studio do this, but I can see that matching the second party's built in half-tone patterns to these for a consistent look would be a major bear..). It would be much quicker to load in a pattern generated at a scale/pattern that already matches the figure, but actually shading and rendering a flat background every time seems like something that could be automated and run off separately... couldn't it?

I'll be perfectly honest with you...I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. :gulp:

Sorry. What I was basically saying is that manga and B&W comics frequently use large patches of grey half-tone over the whole image for dramatic effect. If you look at this version of Wally Wood's classic 22 panels that always work that I've attached, (or http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tHVfHpnv17g/TNIIgRAjBHI/AAAAAAAAMMI/LaObhwV4GrE/s1600/wood22panelsrevisited.jpg, if the forum eats it,) note how the "dark foreground", "small fig- Ben day" and especially "side light or top" images all use large patches of uniform half-tone gray as overlays. Obviously one COULD get close to this look by creating an large, flat object within the scene, adding the shaders to it, then rendering it out and tweaked everything in layers using an image editing program... but it's a lot of extra work to do that repetitively, for every shot in a manga...

So what I was saying was that it would be really useful if there was an easy way to run off a whole flat screen of half-tone that exactly matched the half-tone used on the figures so that the look would be uniform, without having to build all that from the ground up every time.

Second, this would be even more useful if there was a utility to output matching screentones as blank zip-tone sheets so that there wouldn't be a fight trying to get the dot patterns zip on the background as the foreground (the standard manga process is to lay down full zip sheets, then take out sections by applying opaque white over them. Programs like Manga-Studio do this, but I can see that matching the second party's built in half-tone patterns to these for a consistent look would be a major bear..). It would be much quicker to load in a pattern generated at a scale/pattern that already matches the figure, but actually shading and rendering a flat background every time seems like something that could be automated and run off separately... couldn't it?

I'll be perfectly honest with you...I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. :gulp:

Sorry. What I was basically saying is that manga and B&W comics frequently use large patches of grey half-tone over the whole image for dramatic effect. If you look at this version of Wally Wood's classic 22 panels that always work that I've attached, (or http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tHVfHpnv17g/TNIIgRAjBHI/AAAAAAAAMMI/LaObhwV4GrE/s1600/wood22panelsrevisited.jpg, if the forum eats it,) note how the "dark foreground", "small fig- Ben day" and especially "side light or top" images all use large patches of uniform half-tone gray as overlays. Obviously one COULD get close to this look by creating an large, flat object within the scene, adding the shaders to it, then rendering it out and tweaked everything in layers using an image editing program... but it's a lot of extra work to do that repetitively, for every shot in a manga...

So what I was saying was that it would be really useful if there was an easy way to run off a whole flat screen of half-tone that exactly matched the half-tone used on the figures so that the look would be uniform, without having to build all that from the ground up every time.

What you're describing is a very traditional 2D process. I'm not sure that it would translate to 3D.

Well, that was the point. One of the most obvious uses for these shaders would be to create actual comics and manga, right? So, by default, a good bit of the work being done with them is probably going to end up being put together in a 2D program. That's not to say that they wouldn't still be fun to play with anyway, but because of the moire problems you run into when using halftones of different dot-pitch, it would be really useful to be able to print out a "sheet" of virtual zip tone that matches what's being used on the figure.

And, of course, like I noted before, that halftone could certainly be created just by applying the shaders to planars or billboards, but most comic and manga artist I know would rather do some final tweaking after the characters have been placed in the panels and the word balloons dropped in. .

What you're describing is a very traditional 2D process. I'm not sure that it would translate to 3D.

Well, that was the point. One of the most obvious uses for these shaders would be to create actual comics and manga, right? So, by default, a good bit of the work being done with them is probably going to end up being put together in a 2D program. That's not to say that they wouldn't still be fun to play with anyway, but because of the moire problems you run into when using halftones of different dot-pitch, it would be really useful to be able to print out a "sheet" of virtual zip tone that matches what's being used on the figure.

And, of course, like I noted before, that halftone could certainly be created just by applying the shaders to planars or billboards, but most comic and manga artist I know would rather do some final tweaking after the characters have been placed in the panels and the word balloons dropped in. .

I think you're overcomplicating the issue. Why not just render the background patterns separately and then use them when needed? As long as you do your character renders as .png files, you could use whatever background you want with them in photoshop.

Just so you guys know, the shader now supports tri-tone. Basically you can now have three shading colours; base, shade 1, and shade 2. Specular is of course included on top of that. Just like before, the new third shading colour can have it's own screentone pattern applied to it if need be.

Last thing to do is apply the bump/displacement mapping (easy), and the shader itself will be finished. All there would be left to do is make it presentable and add some additional presets.

Speaking of which, does anyone know how to sort the various parameters in Shader Mixer? It seems as though they're sorted by alphabet, which causes "Diffuse - Dark" to appear over "Diffuse - Light". Is there any way to change the sorting so that I can place them in whichever order I want?

This is a hopelessly lame button, I just added some text to the usual Daz one. But if you don't mind, I thought I'd post it here. Eventually I hope you or someone else comes up with one a little bit more slick.

This is a hopelessly lame button, I just added some text to the usual Daz one. But if you don't mind, I thought I'd post it here. Eventually I hope you or someone else comes up with one a little bit more slick.

That's not lame! I think it's actually pretty good. Now I know what icon to use for my renders!